Category: Power BI

Power BI

Small to medium-size businesses often struggle with implementing company-wide analysis programs due to the high cost associated with big data reporting and assessment. In the past, these types of planning software packages required lots of money to purchase and roll out. On top of that, a business owner had to spend money on training someone to be able to read and interpret the information provided.

MicrosoftPower BI, offering the same level of performance analytics the big companies use for a fraction of the cost.

Power BI is a cloud-based, business data analysis application. Geared specifically for the small to medium business, Power BI makes big data analytics available to the business owner at a fraction of the cost of other resource tracking/planning softwares. No matter the size of your company, the importance of big data and programs that analyze it correctly is essential. Collecting, assessing, and interpreting data from all pertinent business activities is the way to move your company forward quickly. From sales to production, manufacturing and delivery, Power BI gathers information from all departments on a daily basis, then presents that information to the user.

Easy to use, easy to understand.

Power BI implements a series of user-friendly dashboards and color-coded spread sheets designed to be user friendly and easily understood. By connecting users to a broad scope of data pertaining to all aspects of their business, it allows for rapid analysis and the ability to focus on areas of concern immediately. Power BI runs the analytics daily, there is never a lag time for fresh data.

Top benefits of Power BI.

Your data belongs to you. No longer do you have outside companies storing your data and providing it only after a lengthy request Your marketing data, lead and website tracking data, sales data are all kept in-house and available at the touch of a key. This kind of “information immediacy” and internal resource tracking allows your company to make quicker decisions, resulting in faster turn-around and reduced costs. With Power BI you own the data, you mine it yourself and perform the analysis of that information on-site and in-house.

For a small business to stay competitive and ahead of the curve requires quick responses on important business decisions. From determining the best products to carry based on market analysis to selecting the best suppliers based on cost and quality analysis, quick decisions are key. The faster an informed decision is made, the sooner you can move product to market. Power BI gives your company the back-story on all data interpreted with the express intent of helping you make the right decision. When you know which markets are growing and where demand is flourishing, you can take advantage of that dynamic instantly.

Because Power BI runs its analytics daily, any deviation in performance will be reported to you. Whether it be marketing shifts, sales force lulls or inventory movement above and beyond regular patterns When you are made aware of an issue at the moment it occurs, you can focus your energies more closely on resolving an issue. Being this agile and resilient in the milieu of a small business is key to success.

Low- Cost.Power BI offers “enterprise- level” data analysis at a fraction of the cost. Because it is a cloud-based service you pay a low monthly fee and enjoy all the benefits the big companies pay thousands for. As a small business, anything you can leverage to enhance your bottom line helps you stay competitive.

Summary.

Big data; collection and analysis is no longer reserved for the larger companies. Smaller companies need to take advantage of every resource they can in order to stay competitive in the modern business world. Power BI was created with small to medium sized businesses in mind to level the playing field. When you are ready to move your company into the data fast-track please contact us.

Findingbusiness intelligence softwarethat gives you a complete picture of everything in your business isn’t always easy to find. It’s one reason maybe you’ve waited to invest in BI software, even though you’re realizing doing too much guesswork about business reality isn’t smart.

In today’s more competitive business climate, not knowing everything about your business can end up hurting you in the long run. All it takes is overlooking one tiny piece of information, and it could snowball into a bigger problem financially.

Going with a “gut feel” about your company should never be a way to envision the future. More so, when customers demand quicker responses in services you provide, you haveto make quicker decisions.

BI brings all of this to you, frequently using real-time technology. The problem is that while you may have insight into internal issues, should you also look externally?

When you integrate an internal and external view of your company, you get a wider view since outside situations could directly affect what happens internally.

The Online World as an Outside Source

Placing the Internet into the business intelligence equation, you have a vast digital world to explore in how it affects your business. The challenge behind this is far too much BI software out there ignores data from the Internet.

So much is happening online you need to explore, including your own role in marketing. Social media alonehas many areas to explore, including how your content performs there and how people interact during conversations. More so, you can get an idea of which social media channel works the best with your content so you eliminate the ones not working as well.

One danger about social media is spreading yourself too thin and not properly targeting the right demographics. BI can study metrics there, plus other places where you’re not directly involved. For instance, BI could scan industry message boards to see what people are talking about and if they happen to mention your company.

Exploring outside databases from financial or marketing research companies couldbring deeper insights as well, though it’s not always easy to gather this or put in a readable form.

Remember, offline environments are just as valuable. Looking at variables out in the real world could end up shaping things more than anything you find online.

Using BI to Understand Nature

You may not think something as simple as the weather could apply to your business, and yet it can when it comes to something like logistics. Getting products delivered on time matters when related to weather.

Studying BI on weather patterns and other acts of nature gives you a better idea of how to prepare and the best days for deliveries.

Metrics on Populations in Specific Regions

As part of your marketing efforts, you want to know what regions to target if doing offline advertising. Looking at the analytics behind the populace you sell to gives you more variables on the neighborhoods they live in, what their incomes are, and even what crime statistics are.

All of these potentially give you deeper insight into the people you market to and how your products help them solve problems.

Socioeconomic Factors in Determining Business Success

If you own a brick-and-mortar business depending on in-person visitors, analyzing socioeconomic factors about your area determines what kind of customers you’ll attract.

Studying this before you even open your business doors gives you insight into where you should locate, or if you need to move to a different region.

Contact usat MaxQ Technologies, Inc. so we can help you with reliable business intelligence software in finding thorough data.

If John Greenough, who is a Senior Research Analyst for BI (Business Insider) Intelligence is to be believed, there will be an astounding 24 billion devices comprising the IoT by the year 2020, according to an article by John Greenough and Jonathan Camhi titledHow the ‘Internet of Things’ will affect the world. This monumental development now in play is being called the next Industrial Revolution and is expected to generate $6 trillion worth of spending over the next 5 years.

For the business management or high-tech professional in the line of decision making the question naturally becomes, how is value generated from the use of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of sensors, from automated and internet-enabled machinery on assembly lines, in supply chains and throughout transportation networks, from continuous video feeds emanating from countless intelligent devices, etc. A big part of the answer lies in turning all of this data into a form that the human mind can readily comprehend. Herein lies the genius of Microsoft Power BI.

Power BI has about 5 million users and features excellent graphic visuals that turn live data into rich displays. And Power BI just received an extremely useful and powerful update with the addition of Azure Stream Analytics, which acts as a bridge between Power BI and the IoT. “By integrating Power BI, Microsoft’s business intelligence and analytics product, and Microsoft’s Azure Stream Analytics, it is now possible to create interactive, live dashboards that offer users an up-to-the-minute overview of their IoT device deployments,” according to a blog by apacciooutlook.com titledAzure Stream Analytics Integrates with Power BI; Converts IoT Data into Real-time Insights.

“Devices are becoming smarter and more connected, and the expectation of what can be done with the data generated and collected from these devices continues to evolve both in the commercial and consumer spaces. Whether you are doing health monitoring, building or home automation, social media analytics, application monitoring, energy management, manufacturing, etc., there are millions of events or messages being generated from devices from which you need to gain real-time insights,” according to comments derived from a speech by Dipanjan Banik, Bryan Hollar, Richard McCormack, Clemens Szyperski, and Todd Van Nurden titledGaining Real-Time IoT Insights using Azure Stream Analytics, AzureML and PowerBI. The devices which generate events or messages can include things like internet-intelligent sensors, tracking devices, and alerts in appliances and in machinery, to name but a few of the myriad possibilities. Of course, there are intelligent cars, airplanes, and even entire ‘smart cities’ currently under development, with an untold number of internet-intelligent devices built-in.

One of the things that makes all of this up-to-the-minute information rendered in the graphical format of Power BI so great is that oftentimes problems can be spotted immediately, greatly shortening the response time. Ryan CrawCour, a program manager at Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics, states: “This (adding the power of Azure Stream Analytics to Power BI) will dramatically reduce the latency and time to action on your most important business metrics,” from an article by Pedro Hernandez titledMicrosoft Power BI Visualizes IoT Data From Azure Stream Analytics. A good implementation can conceivably upload, process, analyse and display all manufacturing and other procedural data instantaneously, regardless of physical location. So “Intelligent systems enable users to parse vast quantities of data from multiple disparate sources and then display the data visually in a way that helps business trends to stand out,” according to Brien Posey in an article titledMicrosoft’s Power BI puts business users at forefront.

In the world of software development, APIs that feed data into Power BI are being built left and right, because “data is exploding and the ability to take that and do interesting things with it so you can provide more productive apps is the opportunity everyone wants to embrace,” according to James Phillips, here quoted in an article by Mary Branscombe titledEmbedded Power BI Microsoft cloud apps could all turn into platforms. Software developers like Carl de Souza, writing in an article titledWhy I Love Power BI, Top 10 Reasons, love Power BI because of its ability to easily create great visualizations, share reports, run on a wide variety of mobile devices, refresh data according to schedule, and pull data from many different sources, among other great advantages.

The future is shaping up to be an amazing arena of great challenge as more billions of intelligent devices come online and the data continues to flood in at volumes that are so vast and from so many disparate sources that it boggles the human imagination. Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics will continue to be right in the thick of this intense and unprecedented wave of development that’s poised to change the world forever.

Microsoft’s youngest member of the company’s collection of programs for businesses, Power Business Intelligence (BI) will allow for integration into mobile applications.

Microsoftmade this announcement during its build conference in San Francisco earlier this month. With the introduction of its embedded capable version of the software, the company hopes that more people, particularly application developers, will be able to use the software. This version will utilize the company’s Azure Stream Cloud service and it is targeted toward independent software vendors.

“You can now take thePower BIdata visualization and reporting functionality, and directly integrate it within your own applications,” Scott Guthrie, executive VP of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise business, said during the conference.

Power BI Embedded through the Azure Cloud would be priced in line with other applications that are currently available on the platform.

Power BI was introduced to the Office 365 platform in 2014. It supplies data analytics capabilities and users can create visualizations and data reports across their organization. Guthrie also noted during the conference that application developers can utilize the embedded version without having to require end users to be aware of the software as a part of their application experience.

According to Microsoft, there are approximately five million Power BI subscribers as of March of this year. With this announcement, the company anticipates that user base will grow as access increases.

MaxQ Technologies, Inc. specializes in reselling technological solutions for multiple industries including manufacturing, distribution, consumer goods and professional services. I Feel free to contact us for your business technology needs.